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Maureen Dowd

A few more unanswered questions for Susan Rice

Collins drew up a list of questions to ask Rice at their one-on-one hourlong meeting slated for Wednesday. She wants Rice to explain how she could promote a story “with such certitude” about a spontaneous demonstration over the anti-Muslim video that was so at odds with the classified information to which the ambassador had access. (It was also at odds with common sense, given that there were Al Qaeda sympathizers among the rebel army members that overthrew Muammar el-Qaddafi with help from the U.S. — an intervention advocated by Rice — and Islamic extremist training camps in the Benghazi area.)

The F.B.I. interviewed survivors of the attack in Germany and, according to some senators, had done most of the interviews of those on site by Sept. 15, the day before Rice went on TV, and established that there was no protest. Collins wants to learn if the F.B.I. had failed to communicate that, or if they had communicated it and Rice went ahead anyway?

When Rice heard the president of the Libyan National Congress tell Bob Schieffer on “Face the Nation,” right before her appearance, that 50 people had been arrested who were either foreign or affiliated with or sympathized with Al Qaeda, why did she push back with the video story? “Why wouldn’t she think what the Libyan president said mattered?” Collins wondered.

Why did Rice say on ABC News’s “This Week,” that “two of the four Americans who were killed were there providing security”?

that 50 people had been arrested who were either foreign or affiliated with or sympathized with Al Qaeda

Where are they right now? Why was the leader of the terrorists sipping a strawberry frappe at a Benghazi hotel and openly mocking the notion that Obama would bring any of them to justice? Wasn’t that NYT interview with this guy a few days after the claim that they rounded up 50 al qaeda?

Obama created a distraction so the terrorists could slip away after the attack. They will kill more Americans or our allies.